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Nvidia Fakes Fermi Boards At GPU Tech Conference
fragMasterFlash writes with this excerpt from SemiAccurate:
'In a really pathetic display, Nvidia actually faked the introduction of its latest video card, because it simply doesn't have boards to show. Why? Because it didn't get enough parts to properly bring them up, much less make demo boards. ... Notice that the three screws that hold the end plate on are, well, generic wood screws. Large flat -head Phillips screws. Home Depot-grade screws that don't even sit flush. If a card is real, you hold it on with the bolts on either side of the DVI connector. Go look at any GPU you have; do you see wood screws that don't mount flush or DVI flanking bolts? ... If you look at the back of the fake Fermi, [from this PC Watch picture], you can see that the expected DVI connector wires are not there, just solder-filled holes. No stubs, no tool marks from where they would be cut out. Basically, the DVI port isn't connected to anything with solder, so they had to use screws on the plate."
A company faked a product...won't be the first time, won't be the last time.
This is actually a lot more common than you might think. Lots of tech shows (whether it's cell phones, computer parts, etc) bring "fake" models in. Sometimes it's just the production case with weights in. Sometimes, when a device needs to be outputting video, what you see is just a movie being played as opposed to its actual output.
Recently, netbook manufacturers have been caught doing it. During shows, you can see some brand new, thin and light netbook with a sign as "display model only". When show-goers pick it up, they see empty holes where USB, power, and ethernet connections should be. All that's there is a LCD, a keyboard, and a plastic shell.
Little update found on this article: http://www.fudzilla.com/content/view/15798/34/
Having built many a prototype board in my day I can tell you I have utilized all manner of odds and ends including not only wood screws but wood as well - I don't think it means the card is a fake, it may be an engineering prototype or a software development board or whatever. I personally don't see anything in the photos that screams to me "FAKE" !
Those do not look like wood screws to me. not even close. They appear way too small and they dont appear to be counter sunk. Go to lowes and see if you can find any wood screws that match. They do remind me of the ones used to mount motherboards or for mounting 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 drives. And my geforce 7800 gtx has those stand offs with both dvi connectors. I didnt realize that was novel.
Some random guy declaring it a fake just from looking at a few pictures? Granted I am not an expert in this field, but NONE of his claims for it being a fake held much water for me.
What the article didn't see fit to mention is that the combination of wooden NVIDIA card and NVIDIA Linux driver still outperform the equivalent production ATI card and ATI Linux driver.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
And yet, you still make excuses for them? Any other company would get slaughtered in the press for such an obvious stunt...
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
You'd think a company like Nvidia would be a bit more careful given their CEO's penchant for bold claims and harping on any perceived gaffe by competitors.
I suspect this "announcement" was very rushed after AMD's recent announcement of their new DirectX 11 part that seems to outperform anything Nvidia has out at the moment and at a lower price point. Combine that with Intel's snub on producing chipsets for new/relevant PC platforms and one can imagine that Nvidia was anxious to appear competitive. Nvidia is in for a VERY tough slog.
So the biggest complaint FTFA is the improvised/hobbiest/hurried/hasty assembly from Nvidia to make it for conference presentation? I'd say in the end it's still the card, it got demo'd and who cares. It'd be a different story if it was shipped out to the public consumer market that way, otherwise I wouldn't have a problem using it as long as it performed. Duct-tape Engineering at it's finest and it got Nvidia through their conference. I applaud. All that oppose, go cash your /. geek card in at the scrapbook store.
The end of the motherboard was roughly dremmelled off to match the fan enclosure (that is surely the designed fan enclosure for the card). The power connectors were glued on, and didn't match the solder pads for said connectors (indeed one was mostly sawed off).
Prototype? No. This card can't work.
Blatant fake presented as a working board? Yes.
Back-pedalling and claiming it is a mock up after the fact? Yes.
This type of reporting is, in my opinion, one of the best things that have come out of the communication acceleration we have gone through. While many people here are already aware of these practices there many that aren't yet. This is the best weapon we have against the consumer manipulation that has been going on since WWII. I'm not saying that NVIDIA is a bad company, everyone does this, all we need is awareness about it.
... Who can you trust? Some random guy out there, or some Anonymous Coward.
I'm utterly perplexed and I don't know who to believe anymore as both sides have such strong arguments.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Seems that they made something because the press think they need photos of a component for which photos reveal nothing. i.e it's a photo. This sort of thing happens at just about every single conference.
Who's been harmed? You've seen photos of something that only looks like the product that you might buy and don't care a jot about the appearance of?
In all seriousity, you speak a bitter truth. My Nvidia 8600GT recently died, so I replaced it with an ATI Radeon 4770, as phoronix had raving reviews about good linux performance. Now the drivers for it have killed my linux completely, black screen with artefacts replaces the login screen and I can't rescue it from a login shell because ubuntu disabled the root password. Rather pathetic that they didn't account for the removal by implementing the option to log in with your normal username (I'm talking about in the recovery mode shell-login here)
So for now I'm using windows XP... Bugger.
This post was made in complete sincere seriousity; as such any attempts to derive humour are doomed to instant failure.
Anyone in the embedded systems biz who's ever gone to a trade show probably knows the "brick in the box" technique.
1. You fab a slick looking enclosure for your "new product".
2. You put a brick in the box.
3. You show the box with wires coming out of it, and a PC behind the curtain displayinging the actual app.
That way, you have something to show/promise/sell YEARS before an actual product is ready, and can blame the engineers for being slow to finish and test that "last 10%".
It looks like the board is narrower than a 2-slot card, wider than a single-card, so they just used a 2-slot grill and improvised. I found the arguments surrounding the backplate to be pretty weak. If the screws stick out a bit, so what? It doesn't compromise the mechanical purpose of the plate.
But those power plugs and the solder points for them? Wow, those really are whacked.
Seriously. They've been faking those things for years.
The author is apparently not that familiar with screws. "Not being countersunk" has little to do with what type of screw something is. Neither does being a "wood screw" have much to do with bing flush with a surface. It has to do with the screw being "pan-head", and whether the surface has been drilled to allow the screw to fit into it. (That's the 'counter-sunk' part.)
To see if it's a "wood screw", a "machine screw", or a "sheet metal screw", you'd have to see the threads and especially the tip. Wood screws have broadly gapped threads, and a sharp tip, and generally a bit of a taper along their length to the point, designed to gouge themselves into the wood as you screw in but without splitting the wood. Sheet metal screws have closer spaced threads, a sharp tip, and much less taper or none: they're used to screw into soft metal like aluminum and gouge their way in, but you generally have to pre-drill a hole for them. Machine screws have closely spaced threads, no taper, no sharp tip, and require the hole to be pre-threaded to work.
Counter-sinking takes time and a bit of skill to get just right without overdrilling and making the case weak. Merely tapping, or pre-threading is quicker: I can easily believe that a prototype would not be countersunk.
Why does a disabled root login prevent you from rescuing?
Just log in as you and do "sudo su". Voila, a root shell.
This is actually a lot more common than you might think
Fakery? In my GPU Tech Conference?
Don't beat them up for showing vaporware.
This is normal practice, I was showing vaporware to my clients many times and have been shown by other companies countless times.
The truth is that the product exists but not in the form you can show it. It may be still attached to a Teradyne machine to exercise it vigorously.
Vaporware is the only way to show a product to your potential customers and get REAL feedback and ORDERS to complete development (not money but a firm commitment to buy if the product meets its specs)
Shocker, a Slashdot author unfamiliar with screwing.
Shockerer, a Slashdot commenter familiar with screwing.
Sounds like he can't log in as non-root in runlevel 1.
But, Ctrl-Alt-F1 to get a text terminal, then log in as yourself there.
There's got to be something you can do to rescue it, surely - at least to the point where a full reinstall is not necessary. livecd?
I learned the hard way that when you finally manage to get an ATI driver working satisfactorily in Linux do not under any circumstances fail to have a ghosted copy of the HDD made before you install a newer version of the driver. You will not be able to remember the exact moon phase, breed of goat or sacrificial incantation necessary to get the thing working again, trust me. In the end I bought a very cheap NVIDIA. The worst thing about it is that I idealistically bought all AMD/ATI to support the decision to open source the driver. As a result I felt a little bad about making the crack, but the potential for the funny was too hard to resist. Perhaps the joke is somewhat on the mark as it seems a year later some people are still having difficulty with the ATI linux drivers. When I install a new version of Ubuntu (probably next LTS), I will try to get the ATI card working out of principle (reinstall from scratch should be a lot easier). Until then I'm not going to throw another week of my life at the problem.
I honestly don't mean any disrespect to AMD/ATI, some things are hard, some things take time. This is surely one of them. I sincerely wish them the best of luck with their efforts and will continue to buy AMD/ATI wherever possible.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
You are correct. It's gratifying to see people that know something about hardware around here. I agree, those look like machine screws that have a place in the screw kits for working on computers. Either stainless or more likely, plated. I don't recall seeing a head for wood screw that looks like that.
Notice the source. The site semi accurate is run by a guy, Charlie Demerjian, who was fired from The Inquirer for a number of reasons, including making shit up. In particular, this guy has it in for nVidia. I don't remember the details of why he has it in for them, I think they cut him out of the information loop because he leaked some info he wasn't supposed to. Regardless, he hates nVidia and does everything he can to make them look bad. In his case, that includes just straight out making shit up.
So that's why he's making such a big deal of this being a fake. He wants it to be fake because, well I dunno, I guess that is somehow a "win" in his mind.
Personally I find it funny since companies do mockups for demonstrations all the time. Wouldn't at all surprise me if the card he was holding was such a mockup.
At any rate as with most things in life, you want to check sources, and on the Internet that is doubly true. Some people have an agenda to push and will... modify, to put it mildly, the truth to suit their needs. I though we'd all be well aware of that after all the political BS of recent years :P.
First of all, those are hard-drive screws, not wood screws, and as they ARE metal screws they could legitimately used as mounting screws for a metal bracket on a graphics card. Second, the "solder-filled holes" on the back of the card are so blurry in the picture, you can't tell if there are pins in them or not. Let alone the possibility of photo-shopping.
What are we supposed to do when a whole article is a troll?
The screws are sloppy but not conclusive.
I find the lack of pins from the DVI connector more compelling. And so is the edge from the power connectors.
What i dont understand is that by this time they should have prototype PCB's. So why not just produce the board without the GPU. It would be the real thing except it wont work.
OK. He got the screws wrong. Big deal. Try reading the article.
Some of the things NVidia did on their "working board" include: covering the SLI connector, not having the DVI connector wires go through vias, place the PCI-E power connectors wrong from where the board shows they should be, cut off the end of the board with a saw right though where there was more stuff, have half the vents on the back of the card completely blocked...
This isn't just "they used the wrong screws", this is "total fake that couldn't possibly work". Saying it was a working board was a total lie.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I believe it forces asking for the root account for run level 1.
Dear GP: If that's the case, try sticking a "2" on the end of your boot params (ie. select the line, hit e, edit the line with the mention of /boot on it, and add a " 2" to the end, then hit b to boot).
Seems that they made something because the press think they need photos of a component for which photos reveal nothing....
Seems to me the photos DID reveal something!
This isn't just "they used the wrong screws", this is "total fake that couldn't possibly work". Saying it was a working board was a total lie.
Meh, they didn't say that was a working board. They said the demo ran off a working board. No real value in playing show and tell with the real engineering samples, as they probably look less like a real card at this point than the mockup does.
The reason he bothered to correct the summary so well was because the summary spent so much time screaming "OMG WOOD SCREWZ!!!"
Also, you are correct: claiming that what was pictured is a working board would be a total lie. As such, the article's author really shouldn't be stating that nvidia claimed that item was a working board, since they had another term for it: "mockup."
In short, the author has an axe to grind with nvidia, and is looking for anything he can to make them look bad. In this case, making shit up. :)
P.S. Stolen from another post in this thread: Fudzilla
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
The screws just look like the screws you need use for hard drives. Wood screws are normally galvanized or black in color. As for the underside connection points, who knows how things are held together on the inside...or they faked it. Pics of the inside or its not a fake I say.
They look more like the screws used to mount hard disks/CD drives.
No sig today...
I'm sorry, but this screws in the end plate are not wood screws. I work with wood on a regular basis and spent over a decade as a manufacturing engineer in electronics manufacturing. These screws are common assembly screws in electronics, not furniture. It is also common to leave off components on proto, demo or even production PCAs. Many circuits are designed to be partially populated using a single board with various levels of features. As far as "First Silicon" is concerned, if a chip is working to spec, there is no reason not to use it. While this may not be a production board (I have no way of knowing), it could be a working prototype. I'm beginning to think the writer is a bit of a drama queen.
You don't need to log in to run level 1. You are already in. Edit the kernel parameters by adding 1 to the end. Do this from the grub screen before booting the desired kernel . It's called single user mode. Or follow this.
Rather pathetic that they didn't account for the removal by implementing the option to log in with your normal username (I'm talking about in the recovery mode shell-login here)
Boot to the root recovery shell, then just su username .
--- Mr. DOS
Broken X driver most likely means Ctrl+Alt+F1 won't get him a working text mode back. A more feasible solution for the poster is to boot off his live CD and set the root password on the disk, to allow single user login, or to boot with init=/bin/sh or something similar. None of that is easy.
I recently gave in and purchased a new nvidia 9500 board specifically because there aren't any good drivers out there, once you start demanding things, like shading, 3d and video all working. ATI somehow haven't managed once to do tearing free video, which does work in the free driver.
Oh, and there's AMD/ATI adverts all over it. Who gives a fuck about nVidia using a mock up, companies do this all the time at tech shows. It's a non-issue! What is the issue is why an article from a site that is so obviously geared around slagging off nVidia was posted here.
(and no, I'm not new here.)
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Generally, the very first chips that come back are known as A0. If only metal layer changes need to be done to fix issues, further revisions would be known as A1, A2, A3.
If a full chip spin is done (or anything more than a metal fix), you start over with B0, and further metal spins are B1, B2, B3...
So, A1 means they probably got A0 back and it had enough issues to later call for doing a metal spin. So one entire premise of this article is quite like false. Ask anyone who has ever done work with real hardware and they'll tell you the same thing about how silicon revisions are named. I've never seen a company that has started out with their first silicon called A1.
Little things matter. When designing hardware, when building software, getting those little details right helps prevent errors and failures later on. The ranting about the wood screws dominated the original post: failing to correct that would help make anyone else who repeated the rant look like, well, like someone who shouldn't be trusted with a screwdriver.
Getting those details right can help your credibility quite a lot when you fill out a bug report, a blog, or even a letter to family.
Guess what tool is used to make PCBs fit to size? Thats right! A saw! When PCB's are made, the boards that come out of the machine will have a few dozen devices on one board. The large board is then cut with a band saw to make the individual PCB. On the runs that we do, there are 15-20 PCBs are combined into one giant board (it depends on the size of the board, of course. We do small stuff.). When the giant board comes in, we cut them apart with a band saw, giving rough edges. Sometimes pads get cut in odd ways. Prototype boards look terrible, but thats the nature of development. You do what is necessary to get it to work, and deal with the aesthetics later.
I'm going to bet that you have never worked in the electronics industry and thus have no idea what you are talking about.
Look more closely, at the PCB, the other end of it.
If you don't notice any of it, then I pity your boss. IT HAS BEEN CUT OFF! They sawed of the end of a PCB straight through stickers and electronics and you don't see anything wrong?
Mind you, I think what we got here is just a mock-up. That is extremely common. You produce the working prototype that works but is ugly and a mockup that doesn't work but is pretty.
But saying you can't see any goofs in this mock-up means you are either blind or haven't the slightest idea about what you are looking at.
Cut-off PCB.
Ventilation holes that are blocked off.
Connecters that don't connect.
This is a very cheap mock-up. And on the whole, that says a LOT about nVidia.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have used ATI cards under Linux since the mach64 chipset was popular. You folks who can't get ATI drivers to work either can't read the documentation, or have no business mucking around on a command line. It is not that difficult.
That being said, if you don't want to muck with command line stuff, maybe going the nVidia route is exactly what you need.
Honestly, I have had more issues with nVidia cards under Linux than ATI. I only use ATI cards these days, because I know the product will survive for more than a year under heavy use.
Ok...erm..I'll get my panties in a bunch for...15...no...12 minutes on this one. OK?
"Nvidia PR was asked to comment on the faked cards earlier this evening. Their reply was, "I'm glad you're asking us before you write. That statement is false. The product that we displayed was an actual Fermi board. The demo ran on Fermi silicon." We do not believe all of that statement."
Note that they didn't say that the board worked, that they hadn't taken a hacksaw to it, or even that there was a fermi asic on it... So the board was a sham made from engineering refuse which they probably had to hacksaw it because there were debugging headers on the end. This doesn't preclude the demo from running on the real thing.
I actually had the same problem, as far as I understand it there are issues with certain versions of xorg, certain kernels, and the 4770 with the drivers. I *BELIEVE* I used 2.6.28 and had it resolved. Ubuntu works fine with Catalyst 9.6+, however I only have a 3650 in there.
The 4770 causes a flicker, and then I believe actually hardlocks the system under most circumstances with a kernel higher than 2.6.28.
If you can downgrade to it, try that and tell us if it works. While AMD deserves SOME flak for not having their drivers working flawlessly, I can tell you from personal experience a lot of the borking going on in recent history is fuckups from the 'development kernel' nature of the 2.6 series, where we'll break backwards compatibility, just because we CAN. It's even worse if you're using gentoo.
What's up with all the decorative crap that goes into video card housings these days? It would be nice to be able to get high end hardware that isn't burdened with fluff designed to appeal to the minimally sapient crowd.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Running stories from SemiAccurate now? Are you going to start running stuff from the Onion too?
They look like some of the flattop panheads that I've got around here. The tops of these screws are like pancakes, flat top and bottom with slightly rounded sides. They look exactly like that. I've got some in both 6-32 and 3mm.
Come on, cut Nvidia some slack. Everyone knows that all prototypes you see at technology tradeshows are real, like that sweet, sweet Infinium Labs Phantom console they showcased at E3 a few years back- oh wait.
Posting AC because you are so l33t? I know my way around a command line. I've gotten all sorts of difficult crap working in Linux. I've written step by step howtos for things. And I got the BLOB ATI driver to work perfectly the first time (well, everything bar not tearing, which was impossible with that driver). To do so I had to hack xorg.conf because the resolution I had (1920*1080) was not detected or supported without a custom xorg.conf. After probably no more than a day (maybe less - I can't even remember how long it took me) I managed to get it working.
So then I read that a new driver had fixed tearing, so I wanted to try it. Couldn't get it to work, couldn't get the original to work with my resolution, and couldn't get the two FOSS drivers to work either. I read all documentation available, I read logs, I read through probably 30+ pages (may have been way more than that - when I have a problem I read through EVERYTHING remotely related I can possibly google, even if hundreds of pages) of forums at phoronix and tried everything they said, and anywhere else I could find using google (e.g. ubuntuforums.org, and others). Still no dice, and loads of people having the same unresolved problem on phoronix. With more work I probably would have gotten it out. But at some point I have to place a value on my time. Getting a low end NVIDIA card cost me $40 and installed faster than it took to download or travel to the store to get it.
I do have confidence that ATI/FOSS community will eventually get things working well. Hopefully my small financial contribution helped to further that effort a little.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
I'm not surprized in the least that some no-named review web site would publish such a bogus story. There only evidence is pure speculation. That's not journalism. I expect that nVidia ran their Fermi announcement *the same day* that Radeon 5850 cards hit store shelves, days after 5870 hit store shelves, because nVidia loves to shake things up on the market with their little press releases. I admit, nVidia has every reason in the world to fake a board. I lost a good chunk of money I'd invested in 3DFX because nVidia loves to bombard the market with phony press releases about their new hardware's capabilities months if not years before they can own up to their claims. Shame on nVidia for their market manipulations and bogus litigations; shame on SemiAccurate.com for being attention whores with no truly convincing evidence for their claims.
and there is items shown that may not be real, fake, prototypes, etc.... SHOCKING!
NOT!
Go to any trade show and its more smoke, mirrors, dogs and ponies than you can count. So NVidia said it was a real card, big whoop. Wrong, unethical, sure, but go to any trade show for any industry and you will see the same crap. What do thing goes on in all those closed door rooms? I've been pitched plenty of stuff I know doesn't exist or they are showing fakes etc. for all kinds of stuff, its just the nature of the beast.
I read the TFA, and quite honesly the site has an anti-NVidia bias to start.
TFA forums references "analysts" and their issues... well I don't give a damn what the analysts think. stock analysts are some of the biggest problems with the financial markets and society in general, and a major reason for the crap in the US, at least.
NVidia is what I purchase and always will. I specifically choose NVidia over ati and intel. I don't care for either companies products in any form CPU, GPU or chipset.
NVidia and AMD (yes I am aware who owns ati)
Well up front, I HAVE an ANTI ati bias. I've had nothing but crap from their drivers since the days of the all in wonders started, and then they drop perfectly good cards from the Linux drivers, because they can't be bothered. Screw you ati!
AMD you bought the wrong company!
1311393600 - Back to Black
I don't see anything particularly wrong with that card. Let's go through it in order:
1) The chip itself: If you're going to be standing on stage, potentially wandering aroung with a little piece of metal in your hand that represents your company's future and is literally worth millions to your competitors, are you REALLY going to show off the real thing? No. You use something that looks close just to indicate size, approximate appearance, and other basic details so the idiots in the crowd know what they're looking at.
2) The number 7: I'm not sure what exactly is implied by the author here, but going along with displaying basic information, it's sensible to alter the display chip with a hand-drawn logo, for the benefit of observers.
3) Blocked vent: From the look of the rest of the card, is seems that the cooling air needs to come from somewhere. My guess is that some comes from inside the case, and some comes through that "blocked" vent. See, a long time ago, humans discovered that when you run a fluid through something with tiny holes, big things (like dust) are kept out, giving you a nice clean fluid. Filters are good things.
4) Screws: Personally, I use those screws all the time in my computer. They're great for mounting disk drives, PCI cards, case components, and generally anywhere else you need a small machine screw. Screws don't always fit perfectly in a final product, let alone in a prototype.
5) DVI bolts: Yep. All my DVI ports have them.
6) Stacking two single-slot cards together to show the end plate doesn't need screws: Single-slot end plates are most likely held on with screws through flanges bent over the card itself. How exactly would that be easier on a double-slot card than just punching a hole and running some machine screws through, especially considering that there's no indication of what's actually behind those screws? My personal hypothesis is that the screws go into a plastic wall that divides the card,
7) Soldering of DVI port: Personally, I think it'd be easier to just solder a DVI port in than clip off all the little wires from the port so it would physically fit where it is. This entire claim is based around apparently a single photograph. Judging from that same photograph, there's also no contacts on the edge connectors, and only a smudge written on that sticker in the middle.
8) Half-covered SLI connector: SLI is an edge connector. From the same photograph, it appear's there space there to make contact with an edge and cover the contacts with a thin connector. That should work, right?
9) Power connectors: Assuming that it's absolutely impossible to use wires to connect anything over a distance of one inch, the 8-pin connector appears to just rotate its pins by 90 degrees, probably to accommodate the other stuff that appears on the board in the immediate vicinity. I'm not an expert, but according to this, that extra connector appears to provide just more power, so would it not be possible to connect it in the port, rather than on the board?
10) Glue: Since when is glue not an acceptable means of attaching parts? I personally have used glue many times, in many ways, for the purpose of holding things in place. On a board destined for display, it seems like an even more practical solution.
11) Board being cut off: This one almost seems legitimate,except for the fact that I have a few boards lying around here with traces (and a few components) right on the edge of the board. Yes, it looks a little crude. In fact, it almost looks like a prototype made for display, possibly even by just cutting off test circuitry from the board.
12) Exaggerated marketing: I'm really not concerned that the spokesman said "This is Fermi" if it isn't. The point is that it's a close approximation, and the card's actual functionality isn't an issue. If they had used a real prototype that happened to burn up during testing, it would be hailed as evidence that "the car
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Has nobody else noticed that the announcement was all about the computing power of the chip, that the case says Telsa on it, and that the whole point of a Tesla is that it does not have video outputs or SLI? If there is a DVI connector, it's probably so they can use the board for graphics development, but that won't exist on the final Tesla product while the GeForce and Quadro lines will have two.
The board my indeed be a prototype or mockup but there's absolutely no way to determine that on the basis of the information in the article.
The three screws on the endplate are standard shoulder screws, not wood screws.
The DVI connector doesn't have any solder tails poking through the backside of the PCB because the solder tails are only .050" long and the PCB is .062" thick. In other words, the PCB designer used the correct connector with short tails rather than an incorrect connector with long tails. Also, the solder tails don't mechanically attach the connector to the board, rather the connector has "boardlock" tabs (which seem to be covered by solder blobs).
The fact that the PCB has pads for a connector that isn't installed is totally irrelevant. PCB's quite frequently have NI (not installed) parts depending on which set of options are being supported by a particular product version/model.
And finally, it's impossible to tell from the vias and pads on the backside of a PCB where a connector's pins on the frontside will be located (unless you have the part number and datasheet for the connector). It's completely bogus to assume that connector pins always go straight-thru and/or make simple right-angle bends. In fact some or all of the vias/pads on the backside of a PCB might not be connected to anything on the front-side, and/or some of the vias/pads might be solely for mechanical attachement of the connector.
Er, The screws so clearly visible aren't consistent with any I use for woodworking, but are consistent with several types I use for electronics assembly, based on the visible head. Your characterization of thread, instead of head, as diagnostic is generally true, but certain applications tend to engender design types. Sorry, dude, but these are inconsistent with any I could easily find in Rockler's catalog. Digikey, however (who doesn't stock wood screws), does have several variants with this head design.
Mockups and prototypes are common. NASA uses several for a variety of purposes in the design and development phase. This appears to be a mid-range mockup, of the "fidelity" class. It sorta looks like the finished product, but doesn't work. So, fine. No story here. An envelope mockup shows sorta what it would look like, usually with an artist's rendering, and sorta how big it will be when it's real... with big error bars on dimensions. A functional mockup looks like an assembly from a Dr. Who show, with all sorts of things emitting from the board, save, hopefully, smoke, and it should work. Not impressive to the press, very impressive to the geek. A full fidelity mockup would essentially be a product that may or may not work, but is essentially the finished product. Its purpose is to show that it exists, and is really ready. A full-fidelity mockup is designed to show to managers and the press, folks who couldn't discern if something really worked, or not, without a scorecard, and at least two trained assistants.
Give it a rest.
because its written by Charlie Djemeran. If you happen to have come across him before you'll already know he's not worth the effort it takes to read his articles as hes the most ridiculously biassed anti-nVidia pro-ATI fanboi ever.
In his eyes ATI can never do anything wrong and Nvidia can never do anything right. Because of that his articles are unprofessional and valueless. He's been a tired old one-trick pony trotting out the same personal hate campaign for years now.
sudo passwd root
Once root has a password, you can login as root.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/news look for the article there. So when The card that was shown by Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia was raised to the public on hand as he declared ...
" now i have one here, this Ladys and Gentleman this puppy here is Fermi "
I hope they prove to be right and release a card before Jan but lets be honest, as it is it seems Companys will do Anything to get away with things now a days so as to keep making money. At least untill they can not anymore.
Lets hope the Demo was Real but in truth we don't know if that was also . Nvidia should have allowed the people to see the Card in the system demo at least then it could have some truth to stand on.
It is for HPC. Though they share the same GPU as that in Graphics cards.